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hmccabe writes "YouTube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution. But since I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is presented during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick and choose what facts they believe in. Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science. So my question is: 'Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the YouTube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?'"

We, humans, know that god is fiction because he is OUR fiction. We invented him. We made him up.

There's those of us who are honest enough to admit that god is fiction, Jean-Luc Picard is fiction, The Matrix is fiction, Dr. Frankenstein is fiction. And then there's those amongst us like yourself who are too dishonest to allow a pretty piece of fiction to be fiction.

Claiming that Star Trek is fact is a lie. Claiming that it "might be" fact or "could be" fact is a lie. Claiming that there's an open question here anywhere is a lie. Claiming that any of this is "opinion" is a lie. And it doesn't become any less of a lie because Mr. Picard is replaced by Mr. Anderson or Mr God.

It's not quite that clearcut--in fact, very few issues of real controversy are, unless you're biased to the point of blindness.

To start with, there are many notions of Godhood. One notion is that of God as the Prime Mover, i.e. the force that maintains the universe as it is. Some believe that natural laws (i.e. the laws of physics, except the laws of physics as we understand them are probably not exactly the same as the laws of physics As They Truly Are) function as a Prime Mover, and with some justification, identify them with God. In other words, God is the aggregate of all the mathematical and physical laws that keep the universe functioning.

There are other notions, but many of them tend to acknowledge God as a fictional character and simply address him in those terms. But even if you want to take the most religious and personal notions of God, well, in that case God is a bit more like the female orgasm than he is like Captain Picard--many people claim to have experienced it, many people think the others are either lying or crazy, and it's largely an open question as to who to believe. The main difference is that the female orgasm is a bit more amenable to scientific experimentation (especially if the female in question has a fetish for being experimented on!), of course, which is why we're certain about that but not so much about God.

I don't particularly think God exists in any significantly religious way, and I think it trivializes the idea of God somewhat to equate it to the laws of physics, but the minute you start acting like it's impossible for reasonable people to disagree with you, you're being a fundamentalist.

I don't particularly think God exists in any significantly religious way, and I think it trivializes the idea of God somewhat to equate it to the laws of physics, but the minute you start acting like it's impossible for reasonable people to disagree with you, you're being a fundamentalist.

Not at all. Both sides in this particular conflict will cop an attitude towards the other. The difference is that one side has all the guns, and the other doesn't have a used paperclip to share amongst all its proponents. Besides, science isn't in the business of trivializing God... science isn't in the God business at all. If science does, in the end, trivialize God it will be because God was less than we thought He was all along.

It's a mistake to assume that scientists have the onus of reasonableness upon them. They don't... they have the burden of validity upon them. Consequently, if one wishes to function in their world, understand that anyone who gets too far out of line will be nailed to the cross (scientifically speaking.) To be nice and give credence to ideas which have no place in science and are deliberately untestable by the scientific method (in spite of false claims to the contrary) is to violate the basic tenets of science itself. No self-respecting scientist would do that: the most reasonable answer he can give in that case is, "Bzzt! Thank you for playing!" Anything else would be a lie, and anyone who finds that offensive is out of his league.

More to the point, the scientific world is a harsh one, no less so to those within it. They don't cut themselves much slack, and see no reason to give anyone else a free pass. This should come as no surprise to the ID crowd: trying to pull the wool over the scientific community's collective eyes has always resulted in a severe and often public bitchslapping. It's the nature of the beast: by definition it has to be hard on anyone that makes any claim about the nature of reality, because to do otherwise is to step backwards. It is the reason we trust science to advance our understanding of the Universe.

This is a very binary proposition, meaning that either one has a valid, testable hypothesis than can be experimentally validated by others... or one does not. If a hypothesis is valid and it can be experimentally verified, it will eventually become part of orthodox science. Even if it's dead wrong, well, we'll still know something we didn't know before. It's not always easy, it's not always pretty, sometimes it's downright brutal... but the process does work. In fact, it is working better than anything any religion has ever had to offer in the way of true understanding, as opposed to just heartfelt wishing. So I would tell our Creationist and ID friends this: forget about being reasonable, forget about irascible scientists telling you to go pound sand. Instead, go back to the seventh grade and have your science teacher give you a quick refresher in scientific method. Think about what you've been saying. Then think again. See the problem? No? Well, then we can't help you.

Science allows room for disagreement (by it's very nature, it has, to otherwise it will become as dogmatic and useless as any of the aforementioned religions, and that actually is a problem in many fields today) but changing the mainstream understanding of Evolution or anything else will require some evidence, and some hard work. That's pretty damn fundamental to the whole thing, you know. It's a constraint that Creationism, "Intelligent" Design and the rest of the numerous fictions created by humankind to explain the world have never had placed upon them. With good reason, I might add, because they would all be found wanting.

Thank God! that secular, humanist people are turning the tide everywhere in the world (even in e.g. muslim countries -- see turkey) and relegating religion to the place it belongs, the private life of individual people.

What you describe as the "humanist people" from Turkey, is probably in reference to the sweeping reforms undertaken by Ataturk following the emergence of the Turkish republic from the ashes of the old Ottoman empire. Turkey had emerged as a modern state - a secular state, where religion was delegated to ones private life.

Unfortunately, in Turkey there is an ongoing backlash against secularists. For example, the people who won the recent elections in Turkey (AK party) are essentially very analogous to the religious extremists and their power bases in many parts of the world, except that they are good at spinning themselves as being "modern", just as fundamentalist Christian counterparts in the US for example. Its support base is generally the poor and uneducated - people with a very anti-intellectual bent. The only difference is that they are Muslim.

As in many countries, the teaching of critical thinking skills in Turkey has slid backwards by decades on account of education policies focusing on strategies for university entrance examinations and the much higher numbers of students passing through schools which could be described as fundamentally religious.

One of the by-products of all this: many people, even those who are not of a practicing religious background, treat "creation science" and "Intelligent design" as being "proven" scientific theories, just as similar counterparts in the US and other countries do. Interestingly, many fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians have such almost identical viewpoints on this topic. When discussing the topic of evolution with a fundamentalist Muslim, I could well be speaking with the graduate of a 2nd rate Bible college in the US, had I not known better.

There is one scary thing I have observed when teaching at a university in Turkey. Students from fundamentalist Muslim backgrounds, and even secular ones, are referencing very famous creationist and "Intelligent design" sites located in the US for their written work to support their views in written topics such as those comparing people with animals. And this is at one of the better universities in the country I might add.

The anti-intellectualism of "Creation Science" and "Intelligent Design" is not just a problem in the US or in Christian countries...

Disclaimer: I am a foreigner who has lived and taught in Turkey for a few years now.

That's not what was requested. You still haven't given any proof that God doesn't exist. Absence of evidence, my friend, is not evidence of absence. There is no evidence for leprechauns but they nonetheless could exist. Same goes for God.

That doesn't mean you have to act as if he does - because no-one thinks leprechauns are real. But let's get the philosophy straight.

That is exactly backwards. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

In fact, "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" can be seen a simple rephrasing of the scientific method. Consider some falsifiable and testable proposition P. How do we give ourselves confidence that P is true? We repeatedly test the proposition P. If we consistently find P (that is, the event ~P doesn't occur, that is, there is absence of ~P), we more strongly believe P (that is, we have evidence that ~P is false). It is not a proof, because P is falsifiable, but we have evidence of the falsity of ~P.

Not quite. Contrary to what some rethorically challenged people like to state, you can prove a negative. You can prove that a certain entity doesn't exist by proving that it has contradicting characteristics. In this universe, there are certain well-established limits to physics and biology. I don't think it's at all clear that leprechauns "could" exist. For example, if they have those tiny heads, do they have enough brain cells to make them behave the way stories claim they behave?

You can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist (in fact, if you work in retail or marketing, you know he's very real), but you can prove that a sledge pulled by reindeer couldn't reach the speeds and accelerations required to visit every home on Earth during that one night. So you have to either accept that Santa doesn't exist or change your definition of "Santa Claus" to something slightly different (or very different), that at least could (even if you can't prove that it does).

The trouble with "god" is that there is no universally accepted definition. So, until you define what "god" is, indeed you cannot prove it doesn't exist. "Proof" of something that is undefined is logically meanigless. For some definitions of "god", its existence can be proven in purely logical terms, but what do we gain by that?

You can take any simple system and add layers of useless, self-cancelling complexity to it, so it would be trivial to "weave god into reality". The real question is: are gods necessary to make sense of the universe? And the answer to that seems to be a pretty resounding "no". In fact, if anything, attributing phenomena to supernatural, unknowable entities is a way to limit our understanding of the universe. Ockham's razor and all that.

To quote Lewis Carroll, "Don't be in such a hurry to believe next time - I'll tell you why - If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things. Only last week a friend of mine set to work to believe Jack-the-giant-killer. He managed to do it, but he was so exhausted by it that when I told him it was raining (which was true) he couldn't believe it, and rushed out into the street without his hat or umbrella, the consequence of which was his hair got seriously damp, and one curl didn't recover its right shape for nearly two days."

And then there's the separate (but often associated) issue of religion, which is responsible for more irrationality, obscurantism, death and self-righteous cruelty than just about any other part of human culture.

Suppose someone suggests to you that there is a pencil in your cupboard. If you don't look in the cupboard, do you have any evidence that there is no pencil there? No - you merely have absence of evidence.

Well, this is rather vacuous. I would say to argue from this position of not even having looked is the fallacy of argument from ignorance. From being in the position of not having looked, it would be rather audacious to claim that there is an absence of evidence.

I think the confusing issue is the difference between knowledge and evidence. To not have looked and claim that evidence is lacking is to commit such a confusion. Note I am not claiming that somehow we can know something without evidence of it (let me now say I am excluding formally/intrinsically provable things, like mathematics, in this discussion, though what I say here could still apply). What you say is true. Without having even looked, it would be invalid to imply evidence of absence. But that is not the negation of what I have said.

There is no evidence for any sort of god. There never has been, there never will be.

I think it's amazing how you think that anything that can't be proven can't possibly be real. I don't have any witty comparisons or retorts to add. I just had to comment how amazing I thought that was.

Yes, because saying "I don't believe God exists, because there is no reason to believe that" is just as arrogant as saying "I don't believe Santa exists, because there is no reason to believe that." Non-belief in Santa/elves/bigfoot is just as logically untenable in non-belief in God. But when you don't believe in those other things, people don't suddenly act as if you're claiming to be omniscient. When it comes to not believing in anything else (ESP, alien abductions, nessie, etc) we know that people just mean "I see no credible reason to believe in this, ergo I don't believe in this." Suddenly when the noun is "God," then everything changes and someone pretends that the speaker is claiming to know everything. They aren't, and it's obvious. You can't prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't real, but you would't lament someone's arrogance for not believing in His Noodliness.

because we can take the same line of reasoning much further. Refusing to believe that demons cause disease requires blind faith in the germ theory. Refusing to believe that angels push the planets around in their orbits, and that the earth is the center of cosmos, requires faith in the heliocentric solar system, the copernican model, relativity, and all of that. Even on a smaller scale away from the difficulties of science, believing that the cards were dealt as they were in a certain poker game, without divine (or infernal) intervention, requires a staggering amount of faith, since the way those cards were dealt is so staggeringly improbable. Life does exist, however poorly we may be able to envision its beginning. Positing a magical thingie and saying "He did it!" doesn't add any information--it just evades the question. The God of the Gaps argument doesn't become any more persuasive as it becomes older.

So, sorry...the burden of proof (though it should be called the burden of evidence, not proof) still lies with those positing a supernatural being. We're just saying that the natural world exists, and trying to find explanations for things we see in that natural world. Positing something outside that natural world, whether it be magical leprechauns, genies, Star Trek's Q, God, or whatever, requires evidence to support that claim. You're asking people to stop developing explanations and just believe in something that doesn't really bring all that much to the debate.

Me being an atheist doesn't require faith in anything. It isn't that I think science can explain everything, but that science is the only tool by which we can understand the world around us. We have limited data, limited powers of perception, limited intelligence, and so on, so the process, being a human construct, is limited. But again, it's the only tool we have. If you're in the dark you can rely on the guy with the flashlight, even admitting the limitations of the flashlight, or you can stay in the dark with the other guy who tells you a) really nice comforting stories, and b) that the flashlight isn't all it's cracked up to be.

As the flashlight reveals that some of the story-teller's tales are false, the story-teller will get more and more upset and point out, accurately, that the flashlight can't show you everything. But the flashlight, however limited, is still the only alternative to the pretty stories. Science is that flashlight. Trust who you want, but I trust the guys who made medicine, airplanes, air conditioning, and so on. This isn't to say that the story-teller has no value whatsoever. People apparently need someone to tell them that they should be decent human beings because God wants them to be. And people evidently need hope that there is something else out there, that death isn't the end. But when it comes to the physical world, including how biodiversity came about, I'll defer to science every time. Evolutionary theory is critical to fields like antibiotic research, and we can't throw it out just because it doesn't fit well with your bible.

And, frankly I specifically see agnosticism as intellecutaly lazy/bankrupt, because if you think it through to its logical consequences it simply doesn't make sense. What practical relevance to your life do you derive from the statement, that we will never know if God exists or not? How does this "knowledge" guide your thoughts and actions?

And what practical benefit does your "knowledge" that there is no God provide you? Would your behavior be any different if you did believe in God? If so, then you are nothing but a slave to your desires. And by that, I mean that you choose to behave in such a way that you think God--if he in fact existed--would disapprove of. However, because you believe there is nobody to "keep you honest", you behave that way with impunity.

People sometimes ask me if I believe in God. I always reply that the question is meaningless to me, because God's existence or nonexistence cannot be proven, and it has no bearing on my life. That is, I would behave exactly the way I do whether or not God were proven to exist or not, or even if I chose to believe he did or did not exist. You might as well ask me if I believe in life beyond the reaches of the galaxy. Perhaps it exists, perhaps not, but either way it doesn't matter. And any position you might offer on the topic is nothing but speculation.

You define the statement "we will never know if God exists or not" as agnosticism, but I would call that a humanist approach, with the addendum that the question really makes no difference. Your belief that there is no God--and your implication that your belief has some relevance to your life--strikes me as self serving, not to mention "intellectually lazy/bankrupt". You clearly haven't bothered to reason out the facts, because if you had you would realize that the facts cannot be reasoned out. You cannot logically disprove the existence of God any more than anybody else can prove His existence. Science simply isn't equipped to answer questions about the supernatural, nor should it be. So you have chosen to simply draw your own conclusion, and argue through sheer verbiage that your position is the only rational one.

You may, of course, say that you shouldn't have to disprove something, and you'd be correct. However, just because nobody has proved the existence of something doesn't necessarily mean that thing does not exist. But realize that, in this case, you are choosing to believe it does not. And that's a choice you're free to make, but I don't understand why anyone would make such a choice unless it somehow made him feel better about his own conduct (for that matter, the converse is true--I don't know why one would choose to believe in God unless it brought him some comfort to do so). For choosing not to believe in God implies that you consider the question relevant to your life, and have modified your behavior according to your beliefs. How are you any better than those who congregate weekly to pray to the deity of their choice? Do you really think they arrived at their own personal conclusions regarding God's existence through a reasoning process materially different from yours?

I am a human being. I have no need for God whatsoever, so I see no reason to take a position on His existence. Clearly, you have a need for God not to exist. And that is why, as I said before, you are a slave to your own desires.

And what practical benefit does your "knowledge" that there is no God provide you? Would your behavior be any different if you did believe in God? If so, then you are nothing but a slave to your desires. And by that, I mean that you choose to behave in such a way that you think God--if he in fact existed--would disapprove of. However, because you believe there is nobody to "keep you honest", you behave that way with impunity.

Whoa whoa whoa. If I believed in God -- that is, the same God that so much of America believes in -- I might do things like go to church every Sunday, smear ash on my face on a particular Wednesday each year, turn to ancient fables instead of science to explain phenomena that I observe, oppose stem cell research, fight against the teaching of evolution in classrooms, and persecute gay people to whatever extent possible.

The Judeo-Christian god apparently wants us to do a lot of things that are not affirmatively moral, and a lot of things that are abjectly immoral. I don't do these things. That is at least some of the practical benefit of my knowledge that there is no god.

4th option about Jesus: A guy like you and I with some bright ideas (love your neighbor) whose message has been corrupted by the power elite. I'm sorry if that offends you, but take this an example: Early christian communities were based on equality. Then Pete comes along and says I'm God's right hand and now we have catholism with a billion people deferring their lives to the authority of the Pope. Can you see the power play there? The same happens in your church (I assume you're not catholic), when you repeat what your pastor preaches. You do what he says, because you think he's an authority of what Jesus would have wanted you to do. This appeal to authority is what gives your preacher power over your life.

Also note that we have no primary sources from what Jesus did or said, only secondary sources (the gospel of various people). Thus to describe the state of mind of Jesus by what others have said/written is not entirely fair to Jesus, is it?

Regarding the sinfulness or lack thereof of being gay, well that's a tough one. Specifically because I've watched two of my closest friends go through the torture of coming out in particularly intolerant environments. It's not something I'd want anyone to have to go through.

This doesn't even make sense. You think being gay might be sinful because bigots make coming out of the closet is difficult? Is it also sinful to be black because bigots don't like them either? Maybe if you're using "sinful" in place of "undesirable," I'd agree with you. It is undesirable to be gay in a community full of bigots. But that's the fault of the bigots, not of the gay person.

But that said, there's many stories of people who apparently "turned" straight.

There are stories, but no evidence. All of the evidence strongly suggests that sexuality is absolutely immutable. The best so-called reparative therapy can offer is a very high suicide rate and asexuality -- which isn't even that, really, it's constantly refusing to act on your impulses. If you decided never to look at a girl again, and you managed to follow through, that wouldn't mean that you were no longer straight.

I have watched one person in particular seesaw in their.. how do you say.. 'level of gayness', from being a manwhore, to madly in love with a girl and questioning whether he was even gay anymore.

Give it a few years. I guarantee you that the guy's still gay. I went through something similar back when I was still trying to be straight. I even dated a girl for a year and a half. People thought we were the cutest couple, completely in love, and so on. I was the only one who even had a hunch that girls weren't for me. You hear stories all the time about marriages failing after 20 years because the guy is gay. It's not something that you can will away with enough time, or suck out with enough vaginas.

For whatever it's worth, I've dated a wonderful guy for a long time now. We're completely monogamous and disease-free, and we don't do any drugs or engage in any risky practices. We're both highly, highly educated and on very high-income and stable career paths. We're still completely in love, we're perfect for one another, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we spent the rest of our lives together. How could that possibly be a sin?

I will continue to believe in God, who loved me so much that he sacrificed himself so that he could rescue me. It provides much more hope than evolution, which says I live for a little bit, and then I die. [sarcasm]Wonderful.[/sarcasm]

Ok, think about this. Without God, nothing matters. It doesn't matter if you are terminally ill, or a terrorist. You are going to die, and that is the end of it. Life, then, is utterly meaningless. Nothing you do will make a difference. When you die, you wont even remember that you were here, and in a short time, no one else will remember you either. Life has no meaning, it never did, it doesn't now, and it never will. It is just time and death. Thats all. That's tough. Get used to it.

It's called Absurd Nihilism, and it provides no hope. It make no promises of magical rewards that no one can ever see before they get them in secret, it makes no promises of cruel retribution for those who are bad.

It's just the world the way it is. No one to provide meaning for you, no all powerful father figure to tell you what to do, to tell you that it will all be fine in the end. You have what you have and you go with it. You want meaning? You make your own.

Some of us are strong enough to face life for what it is, others need to believe in fairy tales to dull the screaming horror in the back of their mind.

P.S. I had a look at the pile of circular logic you linked to, I found this bit particularly hilarious: "In fact, science began to flourish only when the biblical view of creation took root in Europe" lol! Tell it to Galileo and Aristotle [wikipedia.org]! You do realize that this is representative of the entire website? Dishonesty, lies, half truths, misdirections, and illogical, unshakable belief.

Whether or not someone believes in evolution is probably a good question for someone applying for a job as a scientist investigating evolution. I'm not sure it really has anything to do with politics. The only question even somewhat related to evolution that seems applicable is "Will you let your religious beliefs interfere with the way you govern?" That's a more general question that does have relevance.

What are we going to ask politicians next? Whether or not they believe in string theory? That the

Logical and reasonable people can have differing opinions on lots of issues. Including evolution. That someone might not be believe in evolution (to some degree) doesn't necessarily mean they're illogical or unreasonable

I'd say it is. Rejecting a major theory with a century-and-a-half of observational and experimental evidence behind it in favor of a ludicrous Biblical interpretation is more than just a differing opinion, it's a sign of a lack of sound judgement and rational powers.

When people who don't believe in evolution try to set up straw men and undermine general scientific understanding and the scientific method, I have a problem with it. The problem is that anyone who doesn't believe in evolution doesn't believe in the scientific method, which would basically put us back in the dark ages.

There's no zealotry in not voting for someone who rejects a well-established scientific theory in favor of a rather silly Biblical interpretation. If you think it's okay to vote for people who are willing to ignore reality or suspend it in their heads then go for it.

People who reject evolutionary theory are either ignorant of that theory (in which case, they shouldn't comment on it at all) or have a serious issue with reality. If they're ignorant but unwilling or incapable of admitting it, they shouldn't be running a country. If they have issues with reality, they shouldn't be running a country.

When was that, exactly? The Earth was shown to be a sphere (not a circle) before Jesus lived. Moreover, the Bible also refers to the "four corners of the Earth", which comes across as rather flat-earth, no?

No. It isn't. And if you think that passage somehow definitively states that the Earth is a sphere, you are either crazy or an idiot. There are other passages of the OT you can selectively quote to support the Earth being flat.

Also, that phrase in Hebrew is literally translated to "the circle of the Earth" not "the sphere of the Earth" which, especially when taken in context, makes it highly unlikely that the passage is making a claim about the physical shape of the Earth. Even for literalists, that's a stretch.

Between evolution and global warming, I'm getting awfully sick of zealots proclaiming the science is settled and that any skeptic is irrational.

Are you truly skeptical of global warming, or have you been told to be skeptical?
Do you see weaknesses in data, or have you been told there are weaknesses?
Have you been getting your information from sources that have much to lose if the status quo changes?
Are your sources known for their rigorous scientific reporting, or do they only talk about evolution and global warming?

Belief in evolution is a dividing point between rational people and the 'faithful'. I believe there's no better yes or no question ["Do you believe that humans evolved from much simpler life forms over millions of years?"] for dividing people in the US these days.

Now, between a rational person and an irrational, person full of faith, I'd probably take the rational one I disagreed with over the irrational one I disagreed with. Because I'd have a chance of reasoning with the rational person. It's hard to change someone's mind when they ignore evidence and logic.

I believe there's no better yes or no question ["Do you believe that humans evolved from much simpler life forms over millions of years?"] for dividing people in the US these days.

I think the better question to ask is the more specific one:

There are many aspects of the theory of evolution from the principle of natural selection to genetic drift to speciation to common descent. What parts of the theory, if any, do you feel are invalid and why?

The answer to that question can come in many forms, and allows a person to reveal themselves in much more detail than the more straightforward yes/no question. For example, you might answer that you accept all of the aspects of evolution except for common descent of man. This is a radically different position than answering that you don't understand the differences between these aspects, but are sure that your particular religious text got it right.

It's plenty relevant. You wouldn't want to elect somebody who holds power over the lives of hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars who based major decisions on faith?

I mean, if he honestly believes the world is only 6000 thousand years old, who knows what other wacky shit he goes to bed with comfortably at night?

And before you think I'm trolling, I'll ask all of you here this: Would you, or would you not, vote for somebody to believed the biblical rapture was close to happening and that their main priority was laying the groundwork for it to kick off?

I'm not sure it really has anything to do with politics...The only question even somewhat related to evolution that seems applicable is "Will you let your religious beliefs interfere with the way you govern?"

Someone who believes that their ancient "holy book" is a better guide to questions of objective fact than the best scientific knowledge, has a bad relationship with reality, and should not be trusted with authority.

If someone's religious beliefs interfere with their perception of reality, it will definitely interfere with the way they govern.

Indeed, maybe the best thing is to broaden the question: "Mr. Candidate, while we all have our own internal spiritual lives, which are very important, we also all share the same objective world. What do you believe is the best way to learn about that objective world: observation and experimentation, or ancient religious texts? And why? (And if ancient religious texts, how do you know which ones?)"

To me it matters because it would demonstrate someone who thinks rationally and has an appreciation for science (after this administration which flat out hates scientists)... it also would demonstrate to me someone who is willing to stand up for what makes sense even when a sizable portion of the population is against it.

Imagine if an atheist ran for president.

I want someone... for a change... who represents my view. We don't need to keep electing more-of-the-same candidates who are "willing to listen" to my side of things. It's about time the other sides actually had... well... actual representation in government.

It means you do believe in it about as much as most other scientifically-minded persons do. You believe that it's "just a theory", but you probably know that it currently has a well-deserved position as a mainstream theory(the mainstream theory, one might say). You happen to know what "theory" means, but from the tone of your post, it seems you also know why there's no need to put that word on alarmist stickers on biology books.

When discussing gaps in the theory of evolution, it's important to distinguish between "does evolution happen" and "what evolved from what, when, and how fast." Science is unanimous that it happens, but the specifics are, and probably will forever be, still being researched, and so our understanding changes.

Here's a car analogy: suppose you're at the scene of an auto accident, and you point to some aspect that doesn't make sense. That's a gap in our understanding of how Newtonian physics led to the evidence we observe. And if scientists studied that crash, they would probably have different theories of how it happened, and those theories would change over time. But unless you were driving at a significant fraction of c, there won't be anything that contradicts Newtonian physics. Despite the gap you found, it's still appropriate to teach physics to our high-schoolers.

The same goes for evolution - the gaps are in the details, but the theory as a whole is very solid.

You seem to be a bit confused about what evolution and the fossil record tell us. Evolution is not a theory about how life got started - it's about how it changes over time. The comet idea is a theory about the origin of life, not the evolution of it.

As far as your chicken example goes, no-one believes evolution works that way. If a chicken suddenly gave birth to a chick that's a completely new species, what would it breed with to perpetuate the new species? (hint: the definition of species is largely a human construct, but it generally means that creatures of different species cannot inter-breed). The idea is more that species can be stable for a long time, but occasionally, changes happen quickly, in geological time-frames, anyway. For individuals of the species, there must always be a breeding stock that can interbreed, or it would die out! Surely that's just obvious? But, a small group of individuals might diverge from the main stock (perhaps isolated geographically) in relatively short periods of time. Oh, and the fossil record often does turn up intermediate species - but fossils are rare, so the evidence is hard to work with.

Scientists sometimes make big claims (they are only human!), but then (and this is the crucial bit) - they have to back it up with evidence. As time goes on, some established theories shift, as new evidence and thinking comes to light. The changing of stories isn't evidence that scientists are disreputable - it's evidence that they are reputable. The ultimate arbiter of truth is always reality, not dogma, after all.

Belief is a useless term in science. It is sufficient to state whether a theory has merit and accurately describes what it sets out to describe. Anything beyond that is unscientific drivel and unworthy of discussion in this context.

Accordingly, evolution (as it stands today) has considerable merit and quite a bit of explanatory power. Intelligent design has no substance to even consider for this question. As a result, the famous words of physicist Wolfgang Pauli (uttered for other crackpot fantasies of his time) are most appropriate when judging ID or Creationism - "it is not even wrong".

To address the subject of this thread - "Do you believe in evolution" is hardly a useful question to ask anyone because both affirmative and negative answers signify ignorance of subtly different kinds. The answer that science would put forth is that a scientific theory does not require your belief for it to be correct. Bernoulli's principle works every time an airplane flies. You do not need to believe in it for it to work. THAT is the reason why science has come to dominate the way we think today - it works.

This semantic trap is also the reason why scientific issues cannot be constructively debated in a public forum. It is not simply a lack of detailed knowledge on the part of the public at large that messes things up. On the contrary, a well-informed public can be quite knowledgeable about certain things. The idea of using tools that WORK is something the layperson tends to forget and instead ends up espousing his/her pet cause, regardless of the details. Thus we have a rabid eco-terrorist movement, stemming from an activism based largely on ignorance. Further, we have the abortion debate, where the arguments have left the realms of legitimate scientific inquiry and degenerated into opinion polls.

Science philosophers, in my opinion, are responsible by way of shirking their duty of informing the public about the paradigms of evolving theories and definitions of truth insofar as it pertains to natural law.

Rather than ask whether they believe in evolution, why not ask if they believe in the Scientific method? Maybe the right question to ask the candidates is something like:

We can all see how successful the methods of Science have been at discarding wrong ideas about Nature that were widely believed for thousands of years, and we depend upon the ability of scientists to discover and correct mistakes in their ideas in order to build our wondrous technologies. The same scientific methods that have led us to computers and airplanes have brought us modern medicine and biology. As a biological researcher, the framework of Darwinian Evolution is as essential to my work as a microscope or a centrifuge. Do you believe that I should teach anything in my Biology classes that hasn't survived the rigorous testing of the scientific method?

The best piece of evidence for evolution, in my opinion, is human chromosome number 2. Apes have one more chromosome pair than humans do - 48 to our 46. Knowing this, scientists made a prediction. Because humans came from apes, there should be evidence of two of these chromosomes fusing together, since chromosomes don't usually just go missing without killing the offspring. Sure enough, if you lay a certain two chimp chromosomes next to our chromosome 2, the genes match up. Not only that, but human chromosome 2 has the remnants of a second centromere - the structure in the middle of the chromosome pairs, which causes the characteristic pinch. Naturally, this centromere-remnant matches position with the centromere of one of the chimp chromosomes, the real centromere matching the other one. Finally, if you look near the middle of chromosome 2, we find the remnants of telomere sequence - a big repeating sequence that exists normally only at the ends of the chromosomes, to prevent damage to DNA during replication. Again, this is in the right place compared to chimp chromosomes.

Creationists often try to lead you off track talking about the origins of life or even the universe. This immediately cuts out all that irrelevant nonsense and goes straight for the neck - if we didn't descend from apes, then why on earth could evolution, based on the premise that we did, make this prediction? There are more airtight pieces of evidence, like ERV patterns and the Vitamin C gene, but none so simple - two chimp chromosomes match the gene sequence, the human one has a second, broken structure that normal chromosomes have just one of, and it has bits of DNA in the middle that are normally at the end. Everything matches position with the two chimp chromosomes. Brilliant.

If it's not testable, it's just a conjecture. If you want to argue that just because no one hasn't found a test yet that doesn't mean it's not testable, then I'll be forced to argue that you might not even exist. I'd rather not go there.:)

So, I would call anyone who says they believe OR dis-believe in evolution - a [snipped for brevity]

This is more a problem with the media and the way the debate has been framed. Not only does the mainstream American media try to present "both sides of the debate" (when there isn't really a debate anymore than there is a debate between flat-earthers and sane people), but they consistently ask the question using the phrase "Do you believe in Evolution?" I wish I could get asked that sort of question on television or radio. I would simply respond with "Do you believe in gravity?" As many others have pointed out, it is not a question of belief. But, when it comes to evolution, that is how it is always presented.

Wrong. Intelligent design is a thesis, a philosophical position. It's not testable. Hypotheses have to be testable. Intelligent design, or a teleological argument as it is more properly called, basically says that because of the complexity of objects in the world, such objects could only come about as the result of creation rather than natural processes.

It is good to note that even if we could create our own pocket universes which were left to chance but measured for complexity after that fact that we could not prove that intelligent design is necessary. If complex life proved extremely statistically unlikely to arise on its own, that would only prove we were an anomaly and not the nature of the anomaly. Even if we created life intelligently, that would only prove it's possible, and not that we arrived via the same route.

We likewise cannot disprove that we were created by an intelligent creator. Even if we found it was easy in our pocket universes for complex life to thrive, that would not be proof that our specific origins were not special.

We could only offer absence of proof, and never proof of absence. This puts the definition of "fact" quite contrary to anything to do with intelligent design, unless we all one day in some afterlife meet the creator and are shown how we were created. We can neither prove nor disprove intelligent design, so it is outside the scope of science.

I rather like what my high-school biology teacher said about evolution. This is not verbatim by any means, as it was erm... a while ago that I was in high school;-) . You don't have to believe in it. You don't have to believe it was unguided if you do believe in it. You do have to learn it and you do have to learn to apply it and reason about it. No matter what you believe, science is based on evidence, and despite the beliefs, hopes, and dreams of many people, evolutionary theory is a good model for understanding things. Even though Newtonian physics have been overtaken by Einstein, and Einstein's physics might be overtaken by QM or string theory, Newtonian physics is still a good framework for lots of things. That's why people need to learn about evolution: for all the doubts one might personally have about it, there's lots of evidence for it and it explains lots of things. Those students who don't want to believe in evolution emotionally are free to feel that way, but intellectually the class will act based on evidence and not emotion. The test is the same no matter how you feel about it.

In case anyone's wondering, the teacher was Southern Baptist and didn't believe in evolution as truth about the past at all. She did, however, believe what she said about it being necessary to understand it because scientific progress was being made based on it. I never asked whether she thought intelligent design should be taught in public schools, but another student tells me her opinion is that it should be mentioned in passing that some people believe in it if a student asks, and the class should get right back to evolution.

BS. The entire justification for Intelligent Design is that something as complex as our universe couldn't of just happened by itself, it had to have had a creator. Obviously if our universe is to complex to have just happened, then the same must be true for our even more complex creator. If the creator could have just happened without a creator then there is no reason why the universe couldn't have just happened as well.

In other words, the whole theory is nothing but a contradictory, pseudo-scientific ploy to force God^W an unnamed creator who could be God but doesn't have to be God into the public schools. Even the creationists would have found the whole theory absurd back in the day before they became afraid to call themselves creationists in public.

I'm writing this as a beneficiary of Navy funds for my Doctorate thesis project; my roommate and many of my fellow students were beneficiaries of Air Force funding, etc. We did research which may have considerable military application in 10 - 20 years. That's probably why we were funded. But what we learned (particularly Xavier Perez-Moreno's project, which was mentioned here on Slashdot about 5 months ago, and which was touted as having impact on optical switches for computers, etc.) w

Why is the government on the *federal* level funding science? At most you could argue that it could find science that is directly impacts military standards and equipment for the Navy.

Economist's answer: Research for its own sake is an extremely risky financial endeavor. Individual companies investing in it may hit the jackpot, but they'll more likely than not lose their initial investment. If there's no high-probability reward in sight, a typical firm would have to be crazy to devote a large chunk of

The NSF and NIH are far from perfect, and as taxpayers (I'm a scientist, as well) we are entitled to many critical improvements in transparency, but they are vastly more efficient than equivalent systems in Europe (I don't know so much about asia) which are riddled with hidebound cronyism, or than private systems in the US which are extremely wasteful and seldom private anyway (see next paragraph). I really shouldn't need to defend DARPA on slashdot - maybe computers are not your thing though.

Anyhoo, the reason we have computers, container shipping, automation, tele-operation, intelligent drug design and genetic engineering is because the US Federal government payed the R&D costs. Sometimes they provided outright subsidies, but they also provided an initial customer base without which many of these technologies couldn't have been developed to the point that became viable as consumer-oriented enterprises. Personally, I think that the general public is entitled to some of that money back, once technologies developed at public expense become profitable, but this is penny-pinching on my part: the return on the investment in computer technology, for example, has been absolutely fabulous.

Now, a lot of this was done through the military system - but what the military *buys* seldom really has much to do with what the military really needs. DARPA, in particular, is in the business of providing a military cover for technology that is in fact being developed for the supposedly-ancillary civilian purposes. They also do research which really does have a military motivation: it's about 50:50.

If you're some kind of fanatic who believes in the infinite grace of market forces:1) You are about as connected to reality as a creationist.and2) You are proposing that we scrap the most powerful engine of technological and economic growth in human history because it doesn't groove with your ideological fantasy worldview. If you have a big bushy mustache, that's *two* things you have in common with Stalin.

So, the fact that somebody may or may not be completely insane, and stupid on top of that, means nothing to you?

Anybody who believes in creationism is unfit to lead in any capacity, because it is a symptom of a mind gone bad. They refuse to listen to reason, lack the ability to think rationally and are incapable of formulating solid factual ideas. They are utter morons and the fact that they believe in creationism is just a sign post to their idiocy, much as if they believed (truly believed) in santa claus, the easter bunny or crop circles.

I don't want anybody in a leadership capacity who is capable of believing in something so provably false, whatever that may be. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are just as stupid, so it probably doesn't really matter anyway.

A politicians stance on evolution is a huge indicator of their state of mind. They are either liars, stupid or both. Which bodes ill for all the decisions they would be making, and their reasoning (as it were) behind those decisions.

Would you vote for somebody, who was asked simply in a debate if they believed in the Sun, and they said "NO"? That doesn't seem to matter much, unless you look at it from a larger point of view. Obviously, somebody who doesn't believe in the sun is a supreme idiot or is totally insane.

Creationism is for neither idiots nor the insane. A lot of Creationists/ID believers are actually fairly intelligent and level headed. Instead, they are delusional. That's a whole other ball of wax compared to stupid or insane. Of course, being stupid or insane tends to favor the delusion a bit better...

Delusional people can be much more dangerous because they do have intelligence and behave normally, and are able to apply their delusion to direct and meaningful actions.

And no, I don't think we should elect a delusional man as our leader, even though we have a history of doing so.=Smidge=

I'd have to agree. Unless they start stuffing their religion down my throat I could care less how they defend it.

Stuffing... do you mean like forcing everyone else to pay the share of various taxes that churches should pay? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans on money? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans into the national oath, and the pledge of allegiance? Or do you mean by making laws about what you can and cannot do on Sundays? Are you referring to that whole "put your hand on the bible" thing in court? Perhaps you're talking about how atheist and non-Christian soldiers are treated in the military? Or do you mean how the government tries to control religious leaders who get up into the pulpit and speak according to their beliefs against or for a particular candidate? Or are you talking about the recent CBS news affiliate story [ksla.com] where it is shown that the government has been going to various religious leaders and telling them to encourage the citizens to give up their weapons in a time of martial law? Is it the presidential speeches that end with a distinctly presumptuous "God bless America"? Or the congressional sessions that are infected with prayer?

Personally, I've been feeling like government has been shoving religion down my throat since I was in first grade public school. But hey — that's just me.

First, let me thank you for posing a good question in an intelligent way. It's why I posed this question to/. instead of someplace else.

Honestly, it's mostly the latter, but not because they're GOP candidates. Rather I feel the overwhelming problem in politics on both sides is a refusal to look at facts. After 6+ years of the Bush administration, there has been almost constant controversy regarding the administration's refusal to admit things that are painfully obvious to a critical observer. (e.g., Saddam's involvement in 9/11, the WMD justification, etc.) We would not tolerate this of judges or police, but politicians are given a pass. If this is a chance to make someone defend what I feel is an indefensible position, I feel it is important to take it.

As another poster already said, it's a question of character. When a candidate goes on record saying something like this, it's because they are either pandering for votes, or because they truly deny the mountain of physical evidence that shows how evolution works. I feel that in either case, it shows someone who is unfit to lead this nation.

As an aside, my personal favorite example of someone who dealt with science in politics correctly was a Republican: Eisenhower. He responded to the Soviets in the space race by increasing the funding for science education, showing the USSR that we were up to the challenge to being more brilliant than them. I would modern presidential hopefuls would demonstrate the same kind of character.

It seems to me that a great many American's don't believe that evolution occurred. Confronting a candidate on this issue is more likely to boost support among these people than it is to erode support among people who already know that the target candidate is a throw-back to the 14th century. This might do more to energize the religious right if they get a bee in the bonnet over a perceived attack on their beliefs.

I honestly don't give two craps whether a person believes or doesn't believe that evolution is concrete fact. What matters to me is whether the belief or lack of belief results in a regressive, narrow minded, receptiveness to scientific research and inquiry.

Candidates which don't "believe in evolution" may be in the habit to reject other scientific evidence which conflicts with whatever goes on in their minds.

I think it's actually a very bad idea to get into sound-byte debates with creationists, because that is exactly the kind of debate they want. You can't explain the science in 30 seconds, but they can certainly rattle off all their "evidence" in that amount of time. You also run the risk of legitimizing them by getting into a debate in the first place. You don't see geologists getting into debates with crazy people on the street who say the Earth is flat, because it's not something that sane people debate. This is a problem that needs to be attacked at the root (in schools while children are young) and in long-format discussions.

The anti-evolutionist sentiment held by most of the Republican candidates is HARDLY the place to start the questioning. I'll give a sample of topics for candidates, so they can respond to questions that actually matter.

Romney- You once said you want to "double Guantanamo." Why do you condone, rather, endorse one of the darkest spots on America's record? Should we continue to deny them rights in the Geneva Convetnion?

Giuliani- Are you running as anything but the 9/11 candidate?

McCain- You've supported continuing the Iraq war voceriferously, when do we call it quits? After 1,000 troops are dead? 10,000? You joked about invading Iran, would you consider it?

There's a bunch more candidates, but why pick evolution? It is a fairly unimportant topic (considering the others at hand) and it is unlikely that a President will seriously impact what is taught in the tens of thousands of school districts across the nation (who pick their own cirriculum generally).

"How old is the Universe? How old is the Earth? Please answer with numbers."

Because (believe it or not) there are people who don't know the difference between "the universe", "the Galaxy", and "the Solar System", and there are fundies that actively exploit that ignorance.

It's easy to screen out the radical fundamentalists. They answer "6000 years" and are at least honest about their base.

But the dangerous ones are the ones who "teach the controversy", because "Them crazy scientists can't seem to agree on anything! Some of 'em say everything's 14 billion years old, and some of 'em the world's just 4.6! They can't both be right!"

Vote only for a politician who is smarter than a fifth-grader; that is, one who knows that "The Universe", is approximately 14 billion years old (I'll take any number between 10B and 15B) is much bigger and older than "The Solar System", which is 4.6 billion years old (hell, I'll take anything between 5 and 4.5).

Mr. Candidate, sir, given the overwhelming body of evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields ranging from archeology to physics to zoology, can you explain to us how you can seriously believe that the world was created 2,000 years after the Babylonians invented beer?

Could you cite a link for this? I googled it and could only find beer 3800 year old Babylonian beer. An obscure reference will make you and your buddies feel cool but it won't make your point to the audience.

Much as I'd like to see them put on the spot on this, I don't think you'll succeed:

If you say "How do you reconcile with your belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old?" they may say that they are not scientists so they're not qualified to comment on such a detailed question, or they may say that it could be more than 6,000 but God certainly created it, or they may just say "maybe the scientists are wrong about that".

If you say "How can you seriously claim the earth is only 6,000 years old when every real scientist disagrees with you?" they will say that not all scientists agree with evolution, and often today's heresy turns into tomorrow's orthodoxy.

Either way they will then add that science works by the free and open exchange of ideas, and so they support the right of both sides in the debate to put forwards their views. They may also add something about the bible being right about so many other things, it seems odd that it should be wrong just about this.

These debates may have been the place where ideas were put forwards once, but these days they are more like a boxing match in which each candidate tries to land knockout punches on the others, and a panel of pundits awards them points for style. Fact and logic don't stand a chance.

Primate Testing [wikipedia.org] in the United States involved the "use" of 60,000 animals in 2004. Such testing is used
to help ensure the safety of new drugs and vaccines. If you don't believe evolution is scientifically valid, how can one justify this? Why wouldn't we use flatworms?
The FDA, in fact, requires primate testing for many new medical treatments. Should the FDA remove this requirement?

Seriously, this matters much, much more than what teenagers do or don't learn in hi skool biology class. If the Creationist and ID people are right, then we can save quite a bit of money and quite possibly quite a few human lives by forgoing such testing. Plus thousands of furry animals.

Disclaimer: I'm a molecular biologist who studies bacterial evolution at a molecular level.

Disclaimer 2: I'm a lifelong democrat and don't care what the Republicans say at this point.

There are simply so many more important things that we could challenge the republicans on: Why are you all so fucking incompetent? Why are you even more crooked than the Democrats? Have you no shame? I could go on.

Funding for the sciences is something of an important question - and I'll acknowledge a link between acceptance of objective reality and support for scientific funding. But as a scientist I will happily say that federal support for my work is far lower on the list of priorities than clean and transparent government, sound economic and social policies, better/cleaner funding for general education, and a foreign policy based on something other than bellicosity and greed. If someone wants to challenge the republicans on their failure to deliver any of those things, I might listen.

But even so, these debates are sheer pablum - I'm sure all the Repubs favor clean government which is why they want no limitations on lobbyists. The odds of getting any of these people to seriously engage on real questions approach nil.

This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution.

It would be nice if people stopped saying "believing in evolution". I do not believe in evolution, because I do not believe in anything. I am however convinced, due to various solid evidences, that evolution is a perfectly valid theory.

Please, put it any way you want, but don't use that verb, we don't have faith in evolution, we are convinced that it's true because it's reasonable, and therefore, don't ask anyone if they believe in evolution, cause anyone in their right mind should tell you that they don't believe in evolution, no matter what their opinion is.

How about starting off by realizing that Evolution and Creation (or "Intelligent Design") are scientific theories and not scientific fact. The biggest problem I see in science today is failing to properly delineate between fact and theory.

Uh, what?

Care to explain, exactly, how ID is a scientific theory? Nobody disputes that Evolution is a theory based on observable facts.

ID is a religious study or philosophy subject, but certainly not science.

I would argue that you are incorrect. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory or fact.

Evolution is scientific fact. Here, a theory is scientific fact. I believe what you are thinking of is the term "hypothesis." Evolution is not a hypothesis anymore.

Our body's blue print is DNA. This blueprint is copied from generation to generation. This results in errors which can either assist us or degrade us depending on the environment we have chosen to live in.

Umm, you are showing your own lack of knowledge by assuming a theory is not fact. You are using the common tv version of the term, as in "I have a theory..." this is incorrect. A theory is only a step behind a scientific law. It is supported by experiment, factual data and has not been disproven by experiment or factual data.

From wikipedia: "In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behaviour are Newton's theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and general relativity."

Creationism is NOT a theory. If isn't even a conjecture or hypothesis. It is nonsense. There is no data whatsoever to back it up. There is no experiment that can show it to be true. There is nothing.

Evolution is a fact. It can be tested in a laboratory. Unless you don't believe in things like tuberculosis, drug resistant tuberculosis actually. We can evolve bacteria easily. There is solid evidence in the fossil record, in the linkage between DNA sets, in fucking DOG BREEDS.

It is not open for debate, it is not one of several competing theories, it is the ONLY theory there is for the existence of life and how it got to where we are today. There are no other theories. I am using the PROPER usage of the term here. Why this is something people have to argue about is beyond me. Why don't we argue about the existence of the moon while we're at it. It is just as stupid an argument.

I think that you are correct insofar as your criticisms of creationism/intelligent design are concerned; however, fact is something objective, in an epistimological sense. I think even science forgets about its own philosophy. My main problem with saying that evolution is a scientific fact/law is that it is so often construed to imply an objective fact, which is not provable in the least sense. Microevolution is absolutely fact, but never, ever confuse it with macroevolution, which is what laymen usually me

The "Intelligent Design" people attempt to confuse the issue of whether something happened randomly or whether it happened because someone "designed" it to happen.If you throw the dice and get a 7, was it because of luck or because the dice were weighted?

You cannot tell after the fact if you cannot examine the dice. And that's what they focus on. They accept everything that can be demonstrated, but they refuse to believe that it was random.

In such a debate, I suspect taking the offensive is not the right way to go: Demanding them to acknowledge weakness in their own theories and state what would be sufficient to falsify them is obviously going to put them on the defensive, and viewers would be more willing to accept defensive responses.

Instead, take the opposite approach: Ask them what evidence would convince them that evolution is valid - and, as a followup, you could also ask why they feel the current body of research fails to fulfil these criteria. If they dismiss the theory out of hand, it shows an element of close-mindedness. If they don't, you open the avenue for the discussion of what the actual evidence is.

Of course, such a line of questioning is more valid for a real debate, rather than a 30-second talking point which the candidates respond to.

He's exactly right. For all we know, "Intelligent Design" could be "correct," in the same way any particular religion could be "correct." But because it explicitly concerns itself with "proving a negative" (i.e., that evolution couldn't have happened randomly and thus required a "designer"), it cannot be evaluated scientifically. Because of that, it is not science, in the same way that poetry or religion or literature are not science. Maybe it deserves a place in school and maybe it doesn't, but if it does

It is theoretically possible for a pattern that appears to be ordered to arise from a "random" process, therefore is not possible to prove any process is not random.

A - It is possible to get a seemingly ordered pattern out of random noise

B- Not possible to prove anything is random

A does not imply B.

What is your argument? Big words and confused structure, do not a valid argument make. If you mean we cannot be sure anything is random we have a whole branch of mathematics that can tell us how random something is. However you place much too much emphasis on random within the framework of the theory. A random mutation means only that the exact sequence that was changed is not always the same. Some sequence are more prone to change then others because of the structure of DNA, heavily coiled parts do not mutate or express as much as exposed parts. Mutations aren't' random in that sense. Mutations occur at various spots due to any number of a million things and some causes cause certain mutations much more often then others. Each instance of mutation has 1 or more causes, to 1 or more units of the genome. These have wildly varied effects on the expressed phenotype.

For quantum mechanics you can falsify randomness there. If you can find any way to predetermine the certain "random" events then the events aren't' random. thus it's falsifiable. How can you falsify god? You can't design any experiment to have it fail if god does not exist. Unless you narrow down what god is. For instance if I define god to be a 90ft tall human with a red beard and a stubborn case of hemorrhoids an experiment to falsify this is to survey all human beings for one that matches. If I cannot then there exists no god. But a omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent who can't be measured is definitely not falsifiable and any theries related to such a being is obviously similarly unscientific and unfalsifiable.

Where on earth did you get the idea that any parts of quantum theory or any parts of evolution are no predictive and falsifiable?